Cuba advocates at UN solidarity and cooperation in Covid-19 times

Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel advocated on Tuesday at the UN that, to fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, it is imperative to boost solidarity and international cooperation in order to cushion the blow.

It is necessary to implement comprehensive policies in which the human being is a priority, instead of economic gains or political advantages, Diaz-Canel assured in his video intervention for the high-level debate of the UN General Assembly.

The Covid-19 impact goes beyond the health field and causes anguish and despair to leaders and citizens around the world, the president explained.

The multidimensional crisis triggered by the spread of the novel coronavirus clearly demonstrates the profound error of dehumanized policies imposed at all costs by the market dictatorship, the Cuban leader emphasized.

Now we are witnessing the disaster to which the irrational and unsustainable system of production and consumption of capitalism leads, he regretted.

Decades of an unfair international order and the application of crude and unbridled neoliberalism have worsened inequalities and sacrificed the right to development of the peoples, Diaz-Canel noted.

Unlike the exclusive neoliberalism, which separates and discards millions of human beings, condemning them to survive on the leftovers of the richest one percent banquet, the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus does not discriminate between one and the other, he underscored.

However, its devastating economic and social impacts will be most lethal among the most vulnerable, those with the lowest income, he said, referring to studies by UN agencies that warn of rising hunger and the loss of jobs and livelihoods for millions of people.

Diaz-Canel assured that only the United Nations, with its universal membership, has the authority and scope to resume the fair fight to eliminate the unpayable foreign debt that, aggravated by the effects of the pandemic, threatens the survival of the peoples of the South.